


Lost and Found

by rodentqueen



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Action & Romance, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Other, Rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-06 04:16:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12809427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rodentqueen/pseuds/rodentqueen
Summary: A girl's parents are senselessly killed and she is taken far away to be sold. Alone in this new world, she can only depend on herself.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note that the first chapter is the one with explicit rape. It's pretty easy to tell when it's coming, so skip it if you like.

Pop pop!

Even pistols with silencers were never totally silent, and the telltale noise of gunfire echoed sharply through the tiny cabin the girl shared with her parents. She shot up straight in her pile of threadbare blankets with a fearful gasp, pale eyes wide and trying desperately to adjust to the pitch black. Breath came to her in ragged gasps and her fragile hands flew to the side of her bedding to search for the knife she kept there, only to find it gone. Footsteps in front of her drew her attention there, and just as she thought there might be enough moonbeam seeping through the thin sheet that served as a curtain to catch a glimpse of the intruder, a hand clamped over her mouth and around her neck to haul her painfully to her feet. 

The dirt floor was cold and smooth from wear, though the men’s boots had tracked in mud from the rain and churned it up a bit. Her mind was stuck on a loop as they dragged her outside, almost without a fight. _Feet are getting all dirty...feet are getting all dirty...feet are getting all dirty…_

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There were five men, all large and armed, and each loaded down with the family’s belongings. One fellow with a beard had the entire collection of chickens tied by the feet to a single piece of rope strung over his back, heads cut off and dripping steamy black blood into the grass. She gazed at them for a while, numb. Those chickens had been her friends and there they were, reduced to meat. They’d only ever been used to lay eggs, she thought with dismay. 

“Don’t bother screamin’, girl. Ain’t no one around but us,” A deep voice said right by her ear, making the whole side of her head and neck tickle as he exhaled on her. She believed them, too. They lived nowhere near any settlements due to her father’s paranoia and love for the wilderness, and in fact she didn’t even know where any other people might be. Trips to town were strictly for the adults only, and as such she had never been. 

When the calloused hand retreated from her mouth and went to her hands to tie them, she gazed around placidly and licked her lips. They tasted salty after he’d touched them. 

“Why are you doing this?” She said quietly, craning her neck to look back at the man behind her. The others seemed to be somewhere else now, maybe doing a final check to make sure they didn’t miss anything good in the house and shed. He responded with a bark of laughter and she flinched, turning her head quickly back to the front and staring at her feet. 

“‘Cause we can, baby girl.”

“Are you going to kill me?” She asked, gnawing her pink bottom lip. 

“Not unless you make us,” He said, tugging once on the rope around her wrists. When he spun her around she finally got a good look at him in the moonlight, tall and broad with a crop of scraggly facial hair and hard little eyes set deep in his face. He had lines around his mouth from frowning, despite not looking older than thirty-five. Just looking at him made her feel scared, but she supposed it would be strange if that weren’t the case. 

After a few seconds of uncomfortable eye contact, footsteps of several men emerged from the little shack behind them. She could hear the stuffed bags bouncing against their backs as they walked and the cheer in their voices when they hooted and hollered to each other. 

“Ricky! Hope you wasn’t planning to keep her to yourself, man.” Said one of them, a thin man with hawk eyes and a rifle across his back. The others cackled in agreement and she saw the big man, Ricky, look up to them with a smile.

Before she was sure what was happening, a hand was knotted in the back of her hair and she had been shoved to the ground. Her hands flailed uselessly in their bindings, unable to move quickly enough to catch herself, and her cheek was pushed into the mud. She cried out and heard a laugh in return, finally coming to her senses enough to realize it was time to fight. With a wail, she kicked out behind her and felt contact with a soft bit of a body that was followed by a sharp exhale and a curse. The pathetic attack did little though and seconds later a sharp kick in the stomach sent her sprawling breathlessly onto her back, clothes instantly soaking through and sending chills down her body. The moon was brighter than usual, but then blotted out by a figure looming over her. She vaguely heard chatter from the others, arguing about ‘who goes next’, among other confusing things. 

Her mouth worked silently, trying to cough out words when her lungs were too stunned to even draw air, but no one stopped to listen to her. The silhouette crouched at her bare feet, leaning forward to claw at the button on her jeans as she clutched her aching belly and stared at the stars. The pants were a size too small and tended to cut into her sides, but they were all she had. Ricky gave a final tug to get them over her hips and bottom, yanking them off and throwing them to the side. With a whimper she moved her hands to cover herself but his enormous paws grabbed both her thin wrists and jerked them to the side, forcing her arms into a rather uncomfortable position next to her torso that inhibited her breathing a bit. In one swift motion he wrapped his free hand around her knee and dragged her underweight frame toward him, settling his weight atop her with a grunt. She felt something pressing against her thigh and tried to kick and squeeze her legs shut and roll out from under him, but he was nearly three times her size and none of her struggling amounted to anything.

“What are you doing?” She chanted over and over, almost too quiet to hear, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference. While truly unsure of what was happening, her instincts screamed to get away from this man and his suffocating weight. A tear slid down her cheek as she squeezed her eyes shut and turned her muddied face away, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from sobbing. He seemed like that’s what he wanted her to do and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

Ricky’s fingers went to his mouth, swirling around the first three of them until they were wet and then dipping back between her legs. The girl gasped when he brushed them across her labia and she began a new frenzy of kicking, deeply uncomfortable with the touch even more so than being pinned to the ground. His predatory face hovered just above her tear streaked one, and a broad smile creased his cheeks as he rammed himself into her with a single thrust. 

He laughed a little when she screamed and bucked, thin arms and legs thrashing uselessly. Searing hot pain raced from her lips and shot deep inside her, and when he began thrusting it was a new fresh shock with each movement. There was no warmup, no easing into it, and soon he was pushing into her at a feverish pace all the while his little group stood around watching with varying degrees of interest. She tried stealing a few glances at them, but found the looks of pleasure on their faces too much to stomach and quickly went back to squeezing her eyes closed and counting backwards from a thousand. It kept her mind off the pain somewhat, though the discomfort of her left leg going numb from his body weight upon it was hard to brush off. While the initial agony of it all had dulled to a sharp, persistent ache, the pins and needles in her cold limb was troubling.

She had gotten to about eight hundred when the man atop her grunted loudly, thrusting himself to the hilt into her, and she felt a pulsing between her legs. After that, he pushed himself off her and stood, letting her free again. 

“Sloppy seconds, anyone?” He snorted, stuffing himself back into his pants and peering down at the half naked redhead. She’d rolled stiffly onto her hands and knees and had begun crying openly, coughing and hacking with the effort of it.

None of them protested when another man stepped forward, already fiddling with his belt, and dropped to his knees in the mud behind her. Ricky’s semen had begun dripping out of her, but it didn’t deter the second man as he quickly sidled up to her and leaned forward for a fistful of wet, matted hair. She instinctively dropped her head to the ground and covered it with her hands, but he just found it all the easier to get started.

He was bigger than Ricky, she noticed instantly. A bit gentler too, though the long slow strokes he started with devolved shortly into a less comfortable pace. This time she didn’t cry out, just chewed her lip until it bled and kept her eyes focused straight into the ground. His hand gripped her hip too hard, so hard she thought it might leave a bruise, but it was thankfully over in moments. As he retreated, the sound of more boot prints made her heart sink into the very pits of her belly. She tried to beg, but her voice just came out as a croaky, ineffectual whine. 

The third man forced her onto her back again and she resumed shutting her eyes, though to her horror he pulled up the hem of her now ruined shirt to expose her chest. She never did look at him, but her legs on either side of him met with firm, muscular flesh and she could feel whiskers when he bent to take a nipple into his mouth. By that point most of the audience had disappeared and so he was allowed to take his time, despite her incessant prayers that he would hurry and just kill her. It horrified her to realize how _nice_ it felt when his teeth scraped across her nipples, and when his hand dipped between her legs just as the first man had it lingered on a single spot there that sent pleasant tingles up her spine and down her legs. She would not allow herself to enjoy it, and after a few minutes of this he grew frustrated and took her just as the others had, and it was over shortly after that. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Of the five men, only three were interested in her. For that she tried to be grateful, but the soreness in every muscle of her body wouldn’t let her. Her hair was matted with mud and it covered her clothes and skin as well, drying into an uncomfortable flaky mess as they walked. She would turn back every so often to watch her little home in the distance and the ten foot yellow flames that reached up out of the thatched roof to lick at the belly of the sky, but after a little while it was out of sight and she was forced to stare ahead at the back of a man’s head. He hadn’t been one of...them, she realized, and made it a point to only allow herself to look at him because of it. The others she weren’t sure about, and while they all looked similar in the dark with their dark hair and beards, he was easy to tell apart with the long hair that dropped down his back in a similar coppery shade to hers. None of them would speak to her and after a little while she stopped trying. They were headed south, though, that she knew.


	2. 2

“What's your name?” 

They mostly traveled in silence, so the sudden question startled her. She looked around quickly with wide eyes, looking for who the man was talking to before it eventually sunk in that it was her. She turned back to him and narrowed her eyes silently. He snorted and turned his head away from her to focus on where they were walking.

“Too high and mighty to tell me?” His voice was full of humor and it made her hackles rise. He was one of the ones who looked similar enough to the others that she wasn’t sure if he’d been part of the group that’d assaulted her, so she automatically placed him in the ‘guilty’ category.

“Sure.” She spat, twisting her arms in their ropes to scratch an itch on her wrist. They'd tied her feet too with a set of rope shackles that forced her into short, stumbling steps. It served to make the painful, barefoot trek all the worse. Complaining about it was bound to do no good though, so she suffered in silence and hoped her soles would grow calluses sooner than later. Every so often she’d have to stop to wiggle her toes until the stick or burr that’d gotten caught was knocked loose, but that was nothing compared to being unable to smack at the mosquitoes that insisted on biting her exposed skin. After that night, they’d haphazardly yanked her filthy clothes back onto her body but that only meant she had horrible rashes between her legs from the muddy fabric rubbing and chafing. Eventually she’d become so wildly uncomfortable that the pain barely registered at all, though it was making her angrier by the minute. Visions of stealing the pistol out of one of their waistbands and popping them all in the heads with it danced in her mind, but it was just fantasy and she knew it. 

They’d been traveling for about a week, steadily heading south across the empty wastes and avoiding any populated areas. It seemed they didn’t trust her not to scream the second they saw another person, and they were right. Rest was infrequent and fitful, and they only fed her scraps of what they’d had for dinner. She was so sick of backwash-filled chicken bone broth she could scream, but her concave belly wasn’t complaining as much. The men had still not said where they were going, neither directly to her nor between themselves. At least not within her earshot. 

“I have to call you something,” the man said suddenly. She’d just begun to let her mind wander again, watching with bleary eyes as a small river grew nearer on the horizon and thinking about taking a dip. Hard blue eyes shot to him as he slowed his pace to walk next to rather than in front of her. 

“I don’t care,” she said, not making eye contact. He raised a ponderous gaze to the sky and rubbed a hand through his beard, the same one that held her makeshift leash. She wanted to wrap that stray bit of rope around his neck and squeeze.

“How about Red, for that pretty red hair?” 

She flinched when he reached to touch it, his hand coming away dusty. Pretty red hair it might have once been, but at that moment it was mostly just grimy disgusting hair. He laughed sharply, dusting his hand off on his jeans. 

“Tell me where you’re taking me,” she said, feeling braver.

“Why, Red, we’re going to the great city of Boston!”

“Why?”

“Cause that’s where we’re meeting up with the main group,” he said.

She licked her lips, limbs itching with nerves. Of course there had to be more of these fuckers. _Of course._

“Can-can we stop at that river for a minute?” 

She was thirsty and dirty. Thirst she could handle, but all her life she’d been used to keeping clean. Two baths a day in the little creek near their house had been the norm, and she thought she might go insane from the feeling of filth on her skin. Going from that to being forced to tromp through the wasteland in jeans that were more mud than cloth was something that she could not abide. 

He was looking at her with a strange sternness in his gaze, like she was stupid and he was waiting for her to realize it on her own. She scrambled.

“Y-you said you thought my hair was pretty. It’s better when there’s no mud, right?”

The man rolled his eyes and mumbled something under his breath, but an hour later the little group was making her desired pit stop. The others didn’t question it much; they were glad to be getting a moment out of the sun. Truthfully, she was too. She already felt the sunburn crisping the skin on her pale face. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Predictably, she was not allowed out of her hand restraints. Instead the man instructed her to kneel at the edge of the shore and bend over, swooping the matted red mane into the murky water and scrubbing at her scalp to loosen the dirt himself. It felt nice enough, but he was a little too rough. There was no soap, so a rinse would have to do, but she was happy when he also allowed her to wade further in so the current could sweep away some of the muck from her clothes. The cool, grainy river mud felt exquisite on her blistered feet and for once she didn’t even mind the sensation of fishes brushing past her legs. 

The sun was white hot and dried her clothes quickly, leaving them stiff and scratchy but marginally less awful than before. Just before they left two hours later, she scooped mud off the ground and smeared it on her face. The man, still at the end of her leash, gave her an odd look.

“It keeps the sun away,” she said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thankfully, the others hadn’t touched her since that first time, though when they bedded down later that night she laid awake for awhile thinking about it with panic simmering at the edge of her conscious like oil on water. Filthy, disgusting, black oil. Night time made her feel dirty all over, and the healing bruises on her thighs and butt and arms ached when she looked at the stars. Firelight cast a shadow across the five bedrolls situated around it and illuminated the softly breathing forms under the covers, and while during the daytime she was happy to think of schemes to kill them all, night brought a thick blanket down on her chest that made it hard to breathe let alone move for one of their knives. It was a similar feeling to one she had as a child after waking from a nightmare, where her mind convinced her that if she just lay still enough there would be no monster to nibble her toes off after all. But now, there was no telling herself that the monster wasn’t real and that it wasn’t coming for her because she was, in fact, already in the midst of several of them and they were the tangible kind of terrifying rather than the kind with lots of hair and eyes that your mind comes up with at night. 

Where she had once enjoyed sitting under the twinkling stars, head leaning against her mother’s shoulder, she now just prayed for morning to come quickly. As for those memories, any thoughts of her mom or dad were quickly shoved away lest they grow legs and run away with her. 

After a few bouts of fitful sleep and violent nightmares that were mostly reruns of her rape in slow motion, her prayers were answered by the first light of the day. She was the last to wake, rudely jerked out of her dreams by a yank on the rope around her wrists. She yelped and struggled to her feet, eyes bleary and sore from crying. Her throat ached and her eyelashes felt gluey, too. None of the men seemed to notice or care though, just went about getting their things packed up for the day. She tried to listen to their conversations, though most of it was just stupid stuff about recent kills or jobs or conquests. 

“Thirsty, Red?” 

He was the only one who called her that. The others called her nothing at all, mostly. They never really had a reason to interact with her unless they wanted something. So far, she was lucky enough to not have to provide that something again.

She nodded, eyes listing to the bearded fellow holding her rope. He stepped forward and pressed a canteen to her lips, letting her chug from it for several seconds before taking it away. He hadn’t been tasked with taking care of her at first. The first day out, Ricky had been her...owner, of sorts. She winced at the memory and wondered if the bruise on her cheek was healing yet. It must have been in the nasty yellow phase by now, she thought. Just before it went back to normal. 

After Ricky had backhanded her for trying and nearly succeeding in wriggling her hands free, this new guy volunteered to lead her. The brawny man had spat in the dirt at her feet, called her a dumb bitch and then hadn’t spoken to her since. Whenever she had murder fantasies, he got the most gruesome death. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A city skyline loomed in the distance, and since they weren’t moving to go around it she assumed it must be Boston. Her heart skipped when she wondered what was to become of her there.

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“Ah, I dunno. I think Rick plans to sell you to some brothel down here before we head back to headquarters. Not up to protocol or whatever, but-“ he stopped mid-sentence, looking a little shocked, “Uh, I can’t tell you any more. I think.”

“What’s a brothel?” 

He didn’t take his eyes off the horizon or respond, and her heart sank. Normally he wasn’t so tight lipped.

“Why have you been nice to me?”

“I guess it’s like kicking a dog that’s tied up. Only freaks get off on that,” he said, casting a glance at the four walking ahead of them. She made an ‘oh,’ sound and mentally removed him from the _guilty_ box. She supposed he was still guilty of other things, but not of the thing that mattered in this case.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was no more talking when they entered the city and everyone had their guns ready, trigger fingers twitching like snakes before the kill. She felt trapped now more than ever with the long dead buildings standing guard over her, blocking out the sun with their creaking builds of glass and concrete. 

Normally she lagged at the very end of her leash, but as they delved deeper into the ruins she crept forward until she was shoulder to shoulder with the nice man and the red head. It only helped a little, but the hairs on her neck still prickled with fear. Out in the wilds there were birds and deer and lizards, flowers and grass in between the dead patches of dirt, and even the occasional feral cow. Here, it was like the world was coated in such a thick layer of dust and decay that no sound at all could be heard. Her ears strained for any kind of noise, but only the ringing silence answered back.

They picked through the city for a few hours before the reason for their alertness was brought to her attention with a snarl. 

A mangled gray body scrabbled out from under an overturned car with a screech, broken teeth biting empty air and jagged claws flailing. Its movements were haphazard and clumsy, tripping several times on the mad dash toward the little group. At first no one moved to shoot it, much to Red's horror. She screamed and looked around for an escape route, heart pounding and arms yanking on their restraints. They were pinned against a building with debris on either side and she knew her tender feet would fail her if she tried to climb over. 

Just as the snapping jaws drew so close she could smell the rotten breath coming from within, an ear splitting shot rang out and rattled her brains. She screamed again and tried uselessly to clap her hands to her ears, squeezing her eyes shut as the sound echoed off the buildings around them until she felt a little bit concussed from it all. 

“C'mon, we better be quick before muties come to check out the noise,” Ricky barked, jogging off before anyone could reply. 

She whimpered as she was tugged along behind, feet aching with every footstep on the rough pavement. Even avoiding the sharp bits on the ground only helped a little; she just knew she would have an infection by the end of it.


	3. 3

The brothel was called the Cherry Room, and advertised as much with a blinking neon sign that sometimes missed a beat during its programmed flashing. In the daytime it somehow seemed obnoxious and ugly, mixing in an unpleasant way with the ragged exterior of the ramshackle building. Three of the men had since left them and forged ahead to make their way home, leaving the girl alone with Ricky and the man holding her rope. None of them spoke as the bigger man stepped forward and rapped on the dented tin door then stood back and waited. Her heart was in her throat the entire time, desperate to just turn and run as fast as she could in the opposite direction. She looked down at the way they’d come and the vaguely toe and heel shaped bloody spots on the pavement she’d left behind and knew she wouldn’t make it far. It left her feeling more trapped than before.

The sound of the door being flung open brought her attention back from the road and her gaze instantly landed on a round faced, middle aged Asian lady. She squinted at them, only her head poking out from around the door, and pushed her bright orange glasses up her small nose. Her face didn’t betray any emotion besides perhaps disdain for the ragtag band of filthy travelers. 

“What you want, Ricky?” She spat.

“I’m here to sell,”

The lady’s small brown eyes flicked in one second over the girl’s body and then back to Ricky, unimpressed. “I’m not buying.”

Ricky didn’t reply for a moment, perhaps scrambling for words in the wake of a rebuttal he hadn’t expected.

“W-why the hell not?”

“You look at her!” She said, a single arm jutting out from inside the doorway to gesture wildly, “I run whore house, not infirmary. Too skinny and she have bug eyes!”

Ricky’s face turned red as he stammered impotently. The sting of being insulted was quickly eased by watching him be put in his place by a woman half his size.

“Huh-uh, you not convincing me this time. Customers not pay for half dead horse face. You get gone before I call guard!”

With that, she slammed the door and the sound of a deadbolt sliding into place could be heard from where they were standing. Ricky sighed and slapped a hand to his face. “Fucking Lena.”

“What now, Rick? Boss ain’t going to let us keep some kid around,” the second man said, jiggling the rope around her hands for emphasis. 

“Ah, fuck it. Just kill her and let’s go,” Ricky said with all the emotion of one tossing out potato peels after dinner. The other man looked cross for a second, but a sharp glance from Rick set a shiver down his spine and he reached behind his back for the shotgun sheathed there. The girl’s eyes went wide and she found herself too scared to even shriek for help. Her legs felt like they were made of cement and her throat threatened to swell shut as hot, almost painful tears welled behind her eyes.

“Ah, c’mon Ike. Were you born yesterday? We don’t waste bullets on non-combatants,” Rick said, chiding. That was the first time she had heard the man’s name. Ike. Ike didn’t sound like a killer’s name, but he nodded and flipped the weapon around to hold the barrel in both hands like a bat.

“Sorry, Red. If it helps, I don’t think you have a horse face.”

_Crack!_

She didn’t even have time to flinch before Ike hauled back on the shotgun and hit a homerun off her skull. Her underfed body crumpled to the ground, red hair mixing with blood until the two were indistinguishable. What a nasty surprise for Lena, she thought just as the cold crept up her limbs and into her brain until there was nothing at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When she woke, there was a vague wet sensation traveling across her swollen face. Her eyes worked to peel themselves open against a layer of dried blood, eyelashes pulling painfully as she did so, only to look straight up at the moon. It was a bright night and her head screamed at the agony of even taking in what small amount of brightness there was, and as thick clouds rolled across the sky and eventually covered the moon she was never so grateful for an oncoming rain. 

It was hard to see, like she'd submerged her head in a bucket of water that was simultaneously crushing her throbbing skull, but there was a form bobbing in and out of view every few seconds. It was amorphous and fuzzy around the edges, though so was everything else. She tried to speak but found her throat uncooperative and her mouth full of dried blood, the taste of which made her nearly retch. 

The sudden movement brought the shape back from wherever it had wandered, whining and huffing quietly. She brought shaky hands up to touch it and felt wiry fur between her fingers, then another barrage of what she now recognized as licking bathed her cheeks in sticky saliva. Her instinct was to smile, a clumsy and crooked expression that was a shadow of what it had once been. She tried to greet the dog, but her words came out slurred and incomprehensible. The dog didn’t seem to care, just whined and gave her confused hands an eager lick.

As her vision fought to clear itself and focus in the dim moonlight, she realized she was still in front of the tin-walled structure where the two men had left her. The details of who they actually were and why they’d left her were unclear, as were where she was and who she was and everything else she thought she was supposed to know. Somehow those things felt unimportant as well as unclear, and she immediately focused back on the dog sitting before her. She rubbed at her eyes, wet with spit and blood that pulsed gently down from the crown of her head and dripped lazily from her brow. The dog watched placidly, pointed ears alert and flicking in all directions with its tongue hanging out the side of its mouth. She couldn’t tell much about how it looked, just two glittering dark eyes were visible in the dark, but when she felt around for a collar there wasn’t one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For the next few days, she and the dog wandered aimlessly from building to building, scavenging what they found. It seemed that this part of the city was mostly deserted, and for that she was thankful. Her head throbbed constantly and her memory had only improved a little, despite constant chatter to herself and the dog that she hoped would help jog her brain.

“My name is...Red? I’m from...um...Boston. Or..wait, was it somewhere else? My parent’s names are Jennifer and...and…” 

The dog would look up from whatever he was sniffing when she would start along this line of conversation and watch her, intelligence glittering in his eyes. As soon as she got discouraged and went back to digging around in the pile of trash they were currently looking through, the dog would huff quietly and go back to what he was doing. She appreciated his attentiveness, but it felt silly to thank him out loud. 

“Hey dog! Look!” She said, pulling a dented can of meat out of a desk drawer. They were on the second floor of an old office building and apparently whoever had finished their final shift here a few hundred years prior had been kind enough to leave them a snack. Red’s stomach growled and turned in on itself at the thought of the festering meat inside and it was all she could do not to rip it open and dump the whole lot down her gullet.

The dog bounded over and sat at her feet, ears straining forward and eyes bright with hunger. Neither of them had eaten since two days before when the dog had killed a rad roach and they’d each had quite a feast. Her mouth watered at the memory. Roach was grainy and vile, but when you were hungry enough it wasn’t so hard to pretend it was a crab leg you were sucking the meat out of. They even looked similar if you squinted.

She pried at the pull tab on the can, hands shaking with anticipation. The dog’s tail thumped happily on the rotten carpet, perhaps once a dark green shade but now stained brown. Red peered at the gelatinous pink blob quivering in the tin can, mouth watering, before digging her filthy fingers straight down the middle of it and scooping out a helping of it. The dog yipped and spun in a circle, tail going a mile a minute, then snapped it up in one bite when she dumped the goo onto the floor with a wet noise.

“What do you want to do today?” She asked, licking her fingers and scraping out a bite for herself. It tasted somehow like nothing, perhaps with a bit of salt, but simultaneously the most delicious thing she’d ever had.

The dog watched her intently, but didn’t answer. 

“Do you know where other people are?” She didn’t know if she expected him to say something, but he predictably stayed silent.


End file.
